The winner of a recent fan art contest for Capcom’s fighting game, Street Fighter 6, has sparked backlash over its alleged use of generative AI.
Twitter/X user and artist Galena_Bismon has posted a thread outlining a case of plagiarism and apparent use of AI for the Street Fighter 6 fan art contest winning submission. Contestant lilithascends had submitted artwork for one of their favorite characters on the fighting game’s roster, Kimberly, which ended up getting chosen as the winner. Subsequently, fellow contestants and artists noticed certain things were odd about the submission as well as the individual’s Twitter/X profile. A screenshot of the art piece in question and the post, which have since been deleted along with the user account, can be seen below.
Galena noted some odd findings about lilithascends’ Twitter/X activity, such as its creation date coinciding with the date on which the contest began. As such, they had no activity prior to the contest, and only featured 3 submissions, including the winning one. Furthermore, each of the submissions were radically different from one another in terms of art style. Later, it was discovered that the other 2 art pieces submitted by the contest winner were created by allegedly tracing and stealing other people’s artwork. However, instead of addressing the concerns, they immediately deleted their user account.
As for lilithascends‘ winning Kimberly art piece and why it may have been created using generative AI, Galena mentioned that unlike the other submissions, it has a pixelated edge in several areas as well as floating white dots as if it had been cropped out from a white background with a select tool instead of being drawn into the high quality PSD file given to the public. Other elements in the artwork, such as eyebrows of differing shape and the placement of the earring, are usually identified as flaws associated with generative AI software.
